Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine. Clinical laboratory and biomedical science related news, abstracts and images for medical laboratory professionals, students and other laboratory geeks.

Art and Science of Laboratory Medicine

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Sabotaging flagella of bacteria to halt infections

Some bacteria have the ability to ‘swim’ in a controlled fashion through the use of appendages called flagella. Researchers think that disabling these flagella is a key step towards infection control.

Motile bacteria move through the function of flagella. These appendages rotate, which propels an organism forwards. This is a little like the propellers on a boat. Some bacteria have one flagellum, others have many, and some possess none at all. Some of the bacteria regarded as human pathogens have flagella. An example of a flagellate bacterium is the ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori, which uses multiple flagella to propel itself through the mucus lining to reach the stomach epithelium. Some flagella also serve a function in environmental detection, sensing different conditions and signalling to a bacterium to move to or away from a given niche.

1 comment:

That would be a great move to combat spread of infection.maybe work aroud targeting plasmids and injecting them with flagella lysing chemical so that when they condugate with those bacteria with flagella,dey immediately dispower them after conducation and the end product will be bacteria without flagella to move and spread disease.just a thought!!